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INTERVIEW WITH MANDY MURRAY
20 June 2000
Timecode refers to tapes 45_BC_SP
Topics in Bold
TF = Trish MM = Mandy JH = Julie
TF OK. We’re just finishing um Mandy’s interview on the end of, of Video
Tape 45. (45_BC_SP) Finishing off from Page 14
JH Time code 21.
TF Time code 20 -
JH 26.
TF Time code 21.26 on Video um whatever number I just said and this is still
DAT, DAT tape 17 with the time code 1.07. This allows us to keep it all,
and so this is, this is the third video tape of Mandy Murray.
JH OK We’re ready.
MM So we were talking about leaving –
TF But –
MM Boarding school.
TF Yeah.
MM City Girls Go Bush
21:29:21:22 Um, we discussed selling the place or putting a manager on so I
guess by the time we go to leave, we will have to decide whether we feel like
the boys would like to keep the place or whether we’d like to keep the place or
do we put a manager on. I think Lex is liking the idea of putting a manager on
and coming out during the school holidays to do the cattle muster. Coming
out and doing the shearing, and the boys bringing their city friends to come
out and help. Um I'm planning that I’ll bring all my friends out and we’ll sit
out on the river with our champagne while they do the mustering. Because all
my friends say you can’t sell. That’s our annual holiday place. So I said don’t
worry. You can all come with me and they can do the mustering and we’ll
drink champagne.
TF It’s a very very different attitude to the land than, than people who’ve been on
it for generations and who you know, I mean boys, boys um Jack’s age will
probably thinking about taking over the family’s land as what they need to do
or whatever.
MM Mmm.
TF How do you, how do you see those differences in yours and Lex’s lives and
attitudes as opposed to, to neighbours that have been here forever?
MM 21:30:35:14 Well I guess just that the kids at the school even um, they talk
about you know that this is where they’ll live forever and that they will be
graziers on the properties where their dad’s worked or the kids whose dad
works on the Council, well they’ll work on the Council. Like Dad. And it’s
sort of not, they don’t think about the fact that maybe they might go and do
something else whereas I know our boys at, some times at dinner, sit and talk
about what they’re going to do and of course they rattle off a whole lot of
things. Um and they always, I know Joe includes um I’m going to first be a
racing car driver, then I’m going to be like Dad. Then I’m going to be a toy
maker and then I’m going to be – and Jack would like to be an Engineer. He’s
often talked about being an Engineer or a some sort of you know, designer of
something. And then I might have a turn of being like Dad and being a grazier
but then I’ll go off. So you know, they often sort of mention being a grazier
like Dad as a, as one of the thing – many things that they’ll do. And it is a
very different way to, you know, the way I hear the kids at school talk, is that
they will do – they’ll be here in Jundah forever.
TF And what’s the girl’s equivalent of that? Like what do the little girls of
Jundah in the main see for themselves in the future?
MM 21:31:47:04 Working in the office on the Council. Which is where sort of
the ladies work. Um or helping Mum run the shop. Or helping Mum run the
new service station. So yeah – the, ‘cause there is a lot more women working
in jobs in Jundah now than there were sort of when I came I think. The lady at
the shop, ran the shop when I first came and now there’s sort of two other – a
little Post Office and there’s a service station now and new since I’ve been
here, so it sort of opened up a few new jobs for women and the Q Gap ? office
was another one that a lady was running. Um, a few extra admin jobs at the
Council so they’re sort of some girls that I taught at the school. A lot of them
um oh not a lot of them, but a couple of them that I taught when I first came
here, now I’m teaching or playing with their kids at play group. So that was
really weird. Um and they’re you know quite young mums but um yes, they
did their schooling and then they came back and lived in Jundah and they had
babies so yeah.
TF So how does that kind of I guess essentially very conservative set of attitudes
around staying in the same area and you know, doing the range of jobs that are
available in this area, sync with the keen interest in education that you
described?
MM 21:33:03:18 Um, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I think some of
the property children seem to be the ones that may go on and do university or
college, so whether that just happens to be what I’ve witnessed when the town
children seem to be away at high school and come back to the town, but that’s
just because of, you know, the 10 years I’ve been here, that’s what I’ve seen.
Um, so no, they want them, they want them to you know, have a good
education and things but they don’t necessarily want them to go to uni or
college.
TF So is that a class difference between town and, and rural areas surrounding and
a class difference based on relationship to land do you reckon?
MM 21:33:51:16 I don’t know. I hope not, because I know there can often be a,
a town/country thing. Um, I don’t know whether it’s just certain people and it
just so happens to be the way it’s been here. Um, there’s not a lot of children
on properties sort of in this area really. Or they’re little at this stage so I
haven’t witnessed a lot of them go on past sort of high school, that many of
them. They haven’t been at those sort of ages yet, so that’s yet to come,
whether they’ll become anything at uni or college, I’m not sure. But no, no – I
don’t know about the class thing. Hard to know. Hard to judge.
TF Anything I haven’t asked you about that to you is really obvious in um either
your, your life out here or more generally about the life of women out here in
the Channel Country?
MM Gender Relations/City Girl Goes Bush/Women/Land
21:34:40:06 Well I know life for women – um, I think can be you know,
fairly tough, because they, they don’t seem to be able to go away very often or
they don’t feel that they are allowed to go away whereas I don’t know whether
it’s just me and Lex, often a lot of friends look at Lex and say I don’t know
how you do it. She’s always off. But you know, now and then I get that urge
for a coffee and a haircut and I jump on a plane and go to Brisbane and he
thinks that what I put up with out here, I certainly deserve to go and do that.
And I know a lot of our friends that are born and bred on the, in the country,
some of the men um often shake their head and think – and say to me, you
know, boy, I don’t know how he puts up with you. And you know, he often
used to say to me at the Christmas holidays when I was – before we had
children, and I had seven weeks holidays and no way could he leave the
property in summer because it was the dreadful time to leave when the waters
were so vital and whatever. And he, and I’d say you know, oh well I’ll go
down to the Gold Coast where my sister lived and you know, do the seven
weeks away and he’s like oh great. Yes, I wish I could come. And he had a
few comments from friends sort of like saying I can’t believe you let her go
for that long. Like she can’t go away for that long. And he would say gosh,
I’d be with her if I could. I’d go away now if I could. It’s a dreadful time to
be out here but you know, unfortunately I can’t leave the place. And I have a
very good friend that um is often shaking her head and saying I can’t believe
that Lex, you get Lex away so often or that when you are away, that he may
decide to stay those extra couple of days because you’ve had for whatever
reason um, their husbands say alright finally yes to a holiday. They go on the
day they planned and they’re back the day that he planned to get back whereas
I seem to be able to sort of sway Lex sometimes to stay that extra couple of
days. And she’s pinpointed it to being the fact that he’s not from the land
originally whereas some of them feel they can never leave the place.
21:36:30:17 TAPE ENDS